


Daughters

by osprey_archer



Series: A Wedding Gift [3]
Category: Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:03:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"I love Marcus,” Cottia said to Esca. “I love Marcus, but – if it could all be undone – and the Romans sent back to Rome, and I would be a warrior maiden of the Iceni – then I would have it all undone.” She took a shaky breath. “Does that mean I do </i>not<i> love Marcus?”</i></p>
<p>After Cottia and Marcus's daughter is born, Cottia's mother comes for a visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daughters

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to carmarthen and sineala for looking at this.

Cottia went back to her aunt’s house for her lying in. As a child she had not been happy there; yet there was a peace in being in a house that had a floor, and beds, and someone else to cook and clean, so that there was nothing for Cottia to do but watch the dawn drift pink across her walls, until Clio brought the baby in to feed.

Cottia did not like to think how she would care for the babe, on top of everything else, when they were back on the farm. So she did not think about it. She stroked the reddish fluff on the baby’s head, and admired her tiny hands, and watched the dawn lighten to gold.

Marcus thought they would call their daughter Flavia. The daughters of his family had been called so back into the mists of time.

Cottia could not imagine weighting her daughter’s shoulders with this most Roman of names, but she also could not think how to argue Marcus out of it. In the pink dawn, holding her sated sleeping daughter to her breast, she turned the problem around in her mind, delicately, for it was a sharp and pointed thing. 

How could they call her Flavia, when she had the fiery hair of the tribes already – and, by her cries, the fiery spirit as well? Guinhumara, Cottia thought they should call the babe.

Indeed, she had suggested it to Esca the night before; and he had frowned. “Do you mislike it?” she asked.

“No, I like it very well,” he said. An odd smile overtook his face: happy yet not happy. “Marcus will not, but…” He swallowed. Cottia saw with horror that there were tears in his eyes. “It is only...Guinhumara was my mother’s name.” He paused, and swallowed again. “I like it very well.”

Pleasure and pity mingled in her breast – and envy, as well, that he had a mother worth the weeping. “Perhaps…” she said, and laid a hand on Esca’s arm. “Perhaps you wish to save the name for your own daughter?”

“No,” he said. “I would be full glad for your daughter to bear her name.” Their eyes met a moment, and an understanding hovered in the air between them.

And then Marcus had come in (“Kaeso would not let me go till he got a game of latrunculi out of me”), and Esca had turned the talk to the cow they meant to buy once they returned to the farm – for Marcus thought the girl would be Flavia.

The sound of the curtain shushing aside roused Cottia from her thoughts. “Clio, don’t take her just yet,” Cottia said.

“Oh, but I have to,” Clio said, and swooped the baby girl from Cottia’s arms, so swiftly that Guinhumara barely stirred before settling again against Clio’s skinny shoulders. Cottia saw with puzzlement that Clio was flushed and trying to hide a smile.

“Clio, what is going on?” Cottia asked.

But before Clio could answer, the curtain shushed aside again. “Aunt Valaria – ” Cottia said, and stopped, puzzled; for the interloper was not Aunt Valaria, nor anyone else from the household. Cottia could not see the woman’s face, for the early morning sun did not cast its light to the door. But she was a British woman, her hair loose, wearing a fine wool dress.

The figure moved forward, so the light gilded her face: older, but still lovely. “Cottia – or I suppose I must call you Camilla now? Oh, Camilla, you’ve grown such a beautiful woman,” she said, and tears filled her amber eyes as she smiled. 

“Mother,” whispered Cottia, and cleared her throat. “Mother. Why are you here?”

***

Her mother – Cottia could not believe it - _her mother_ , whom she had not seen for five years before the wedding, sat on a stool by Cottia’s bed, smiling down at her, weeping. “My pretty, pretty girl,” Cottia’s mother said, and patted Cottia’s hand; and Cottia, though she did not know why, burst into tears as well.

Her mother made to put her arms around Cottia, but Cottia pulled her knees to her chest and her arms around her knees, making herself a prickly fortress of elbows. Her mother touched her hair instead, smoothing her fingers through the sleep tangles till Cottia forced herself to calm down. It was not as though she had not seen her mother since she left home: her mother had been at the wedding.

But Cottia and Marcus had left for the farm the day after. Cottia did not have to talk to her then. 

“Why are you here?” Cottia asked again, voice ragged. She cleared her throat. She was no sad little girl now, but a mother herself.

“Why, I came to see you,” Cottia’s mother said, as if that were the most natural thing in the world.

“I am glad Brys let you,” Cottia said sullenly. It was not respectful, probably, to call her stepfather by his given name; but she did not spit after his name, which seemed respectful enough to her, when he had forced her mother to send her to Calleva.

Her mother smiled. “He could hardly keep me away from you,” she said, untangling a knot in Cottia’s hair.

Cottia shook her head, trying to loosen her mother’s hand. “He kept us apart well enough after you wed,” she said.

Cottia’s mother stared at her. “Why, is that what you think? Oh, Cot – Camilla! I never would have married Brys if that had been the way of it.”

Cottia went very straight and still, like a rabbit that had just realized it had caught the eye of a hawk. She could not breath. Her mother folded her in her arms, stroking Cottia’s hair. “It seemed best, and you had such trouble adjusting that it never seemed like a good idea to bring you back – oh, Camilla, I’ve missed you so!” Her mother caught her breath, pulling back to look into Cottia’s face. “But you’ve married such a suitable Roman man,” she said, with a pleading look. “A soldier - with his own farm! Such a good match! – so it really was all for the best.”

All at once feeling flooded back through Cottia’s body. She thrust herself from her mother’s arms, pressing herself against the wall, as far away as she could get. “It was you!” she cried. “All this time I thought Brys made you do it, but it was you, all this time, who sent me away, you, _you_!”

Her mother’s placid brow wrinkled. “Well of course, dear. Brys thought you were a bit too young, really.”

“But – but I thought – ” Cottia stopped, thinking again, remember the tangle of days after her father’s death. He had been dead, her beloved father – and her mother was marrying some hunter with drooping mustaches and yellow teeth – and Cottia was being sent away: and all those things had melted in her mind, so that the death and the hunter and the sending away seemed one calamity to her.

It had been better, perhaps, than knowing her mother was to blame.

“Valaria only went when she was older, and she had such trouble fitting in; and we wanted to spare you all that, she and I, so we decided you would go to Calleva earlier,” Cottia’s mother said. “And when Midir died, well, and you were so sad – it seemed well to send you sooner still, so the change might soften your grief.”

“How could you?” Cottia asked. “I do not understand. How, how _could_ you want to send me away?”

Her mother caressed her hair. “Oh, dearest, I didn’t want to. But it was so much better for you. A chance to make a really suitable match, just as Valaria made.”

“Suitable,” Cottia echoed, and jerked away from her mother’s soothing hand. “Suitable! A Roman! For me, a maiden of the Iceni!”

Her mother reached for her. “Camilla – ”

“ _Cottia!_ ” Cottia shouted, pressing herself against the wall, as far from her mother as possible. Down the hall, she heard Guinhumara shriek as well. “I am _not_ Camilla, I am _not_ a Roman girl, and my name is _Cottia_!”

Yet again the curtain brushed aside, and this time it was Aunt Valaria who came in, her flimsy mantle drifting beside her and her half-curled hair strangely at odds with her firm-set mouth. “Shula!” she said, so sharply that Cottia’s mother started out of her stool. Aunt Valaria put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her out the door. “Shula, my sweet, come with me. Camilla – ” and though Aunt Valaria still addressed Cottia’s mother, she glared admonishingly at Cottia over her shoulder – “needs to rest.”

The curtain fell shut behind them. Down the hall, Guinhumara cried.

“I told you to leave this till later,” Aunt Valaria said. She never realized how her voice carried when she spoke with that stentorian note

Cottia strained, but she could not hear her mother’s reply above Guinhumara’s cries.

“She will understand,” Aunt Valaria said, and her voice was getting softer now. “When little Flavia grows up, and Camilla thinks how to give her the best life – then she will understand.”

***

It was Esca who came in, not long after: and Cottia was glad that it was only him, for she was not sure she could have looked kindly on her so-suitable Roman soldier husband just then. A Roman soldier! Suitable for a maiden of the Iceni! How _could_ her mother think so?

Aunt Valaria had not thought Marcus rich enough to be quite suitable. That was little enough comfort right then.

But Esca could not know her thoughts, and so he apologized for coming alone: “Marcus went to the baths before daybreak,” he explained. 

“And you? Why are you not at the baths too?” Cottia asked. Glad she was that Esca had come – but sorry, at the same time, because she knew he must have heard her shouting at her mother. Doubtless the whole house had heard it.

“I have lost the habit of ignoring strangers who stare at my tattoos,” Esca said.

They sat in silence a long while. Esca poured her a bowl of water, and Cottia dipped the end of her mantle and washed her tear-streaked face.

“I _hate_ Romans,” Cottia said, voice shaking. “I hate them, I – _hate_ them, oh, Esca.”

Esca took the water bowl back. He regarded her gravely, the bowl between his hands. “It is not only Romans who stare,” he said. “And what of Marcus? You do not hate him, and he is Roman all through.”

“No. I love Marcus,” Cottia said. “I love Marcus, but – if it could all be undone – and the Romans sent back to Rome, and I would be a warrior maiden of the Iceni – then I would have it all undone.” She took a shaky breath. “Does that mean I do _not_ love Marcus?”

“I don’t think so,” Esca said. “But I do not think Marcus would understand.”

“Yes, but…”

Esca pulled the stool forward, so he sat hard by the bed. “Cottia, don’t torture yourself,” he said softly. “You know it cannot be, so don’t think on it.”

“I do not see how you can just accept that,” she replied.

“Would it be better if I spent my life yearning for impossible things?”

It was in her heart to say yes, though she knew it was unfair. Had it been wise to try to wish her father back alive? No: it had only made her cry till she grew thin and pale and ill, and her mother decided it was best to send her away to Calleva. So the change could soften her grief – ha! Probably her mother had only been tired of hearing her cry.

But it would not do any good to wish that had not happened, either.

“I suppose it does no good,” Cottia admitted. But saying it aloud made her heart rebel against it: and she cried, “But do we know always what is possible? When I came to Calleva it seemed to me impossible that I could marry a Roman and be happy, and yet look what has happened. And three years ago, would you have said that _you_ could ever be happy again?”

He looked away. She hurried on, words rushing over each other like water foaming over rocks. “So – so perhaps it is not good to wish for the dead to rise and everything to be like it was, because such wishes truly are impossible. But for other things – how do we know if they are impossible or not, if we do not yearn for them – and fight for them!”

“But you _were_ wishing for everything to be like it was,” he said.

“Yes, and you were right, it was foolish. The Romans are here, and even if they leave it will not be as it would have been if they had never been here. They have changed us, down to the blood: my daughter will be half-Roman. But she does not need to be _all_ Roman, do you see? Because it is not – it is _not_ the best thing to bring her up as a Roman maiden.” Cottia blinked swiftly against tears. “Wanting my daughter to be Guinhumara – that is a possible thing.”

“Yes.” Esca paused. “But it is a thing that will make trouble.”

“So?” she challenged. “Will you stand with me, my shieldbrother, against the might of Rome?”

Esca laughed, a pained gasp, and she thought again that she had gone too far, too fast. But along with the pain in his face there was some light she had not seen before, and he held out his hand to her. “Shieldsister,” he said, and gripped her hand, one warrior to another. “Warrior maiden of the Iceni. The Brigantes will stand with you.”


End file.
